Renewable meltdown: here’s the true logic of renewable energy

In a recent interview, Rod Adams, publisher of the excellent Atomic Insights, discusses nuclear and renewable energy with Arjun Makhijani, president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research. It’s a bit lengthy, and you will need something that can play iTunes. But it is an excellent example of the logic underpinning the arguments in favour of renewable energy.

Makhijani’s arguments in favour of renewable energy are exactly those used by all advocates of renewables, including those in Canada and especially Ontario. Not a single one of them can coherently or credibly answer the question of how to cover intermittency. They all know it will be some sort of fossil that covers nighttime or when the wind isn’t blowing.

Hear it in his own words. Toward the end, Rod asks a natural and perfectly reasonable question about solar energy: how will solar energy provide electricity from six p.m. to six a.m.?

No need for iTunes. If you click on the first link (‘recent interview’)in the first paragraph of the above story, it will take you to The Atomic Show podcast page. Once there, you can listen to the interview using the pop-up player, or download the mp3 file.

The answer is storage. Like pumped hydro, or heat sinks, or compressed air.
Of course, storage makes the total cost of electricity much more expensive, for the capital cost and the thermodynamic losses. Demand management and massive grid interconnections might also be part of the answer. Just keep adding up the costs.

Renewables, even though they are often more expensive than their alternatives (coal, gas, nuclear, hydro), are actually relatively cheap compared to what they would be if they were more prevalent, precisely because they are usually a small proportion of the electricity grids, and don’t have too worry much about the myriad issues entwined with their intermittancy.

The renewables industry might grow faster if they were applied efficiently: towards novel applications that can efficiently use the discontinuous and highly variable electricity or mechanical power they provide. Right now, renewables industries, if not digging their own graves, then are selling their technological potential short, by near-exclusively pushing the industry towards electrical grid connectivity; an application towards they are less well-suited than nuclear and much of the current competition (coal, gas or hydro).

Too little research is done towards novel uses of the power and electricity provided by renewables. Too much effort is spent trying to push renewables onto the grid.

And this is understandable too: the economic incentives provided by governments are ever-more steering the renewables industry into this less effective direction of grid power generation.

crf, I don’t see the value of wind-powered electricity if it can’t be economically put into the grid, which is the most efficient vehicle for distributing electricity. I mean, it’s not even economical or efficient to have wind in remote communities that are off the grid — they need diesel anyway so why waste time and money on a superfluous and unreliable power source.

I think you are saying that there could be a niche market for “renewable” mechanical and electric power. Perhaps. But that might bring us back to conflict over public resources. Water power was great if you were running a mill. But not so great if you lived near the same river and wanted electricity. Those in the latter category were more numerous; hence the electric grid.

If wind energy is relatively cheap, but providing reliable power with wind is crushingly expensive, then don’t compete against reliable grid power. Instead, come up with a novel use of unreliable power.

The problem with this approach is that the capital cost of whatever equipment you need has to be really low and the value of what you make has to be almost as high as products of reliable energy. I’m drawing a blank on possible applications.

If wind energy is relatively cheap, but providing reliable power with wind is crushingly expensive, then don’t compete against reliable grid power. Instead, come up with a novel use of unreliable power.

One would not want to ride a sail-propelled icebreaker, but a modern wind turbine could have a pretty good chance of keeping the passengers comfortable, with a ballast of lead-acid batteries, even in prolonged calms. And if a gale blew up — not too hard — the thrusters could be powered, and through the ice we go.

The outfit named on that page’s masthead — hey, “mast” — did go to another power source, but it was, of course, not wind.

Table A1: Total Ontario generation and related CO2, by fuel, in the hour preceding 23:06 on 2018-02-21

FUEL

MWh

CO2, tons

Nuclear

10,265

0

Hydro

4,844

0

Gas

552

223

Wind

507

0

Biofuel

27

27

Oil & Gas

0

0

Solar

0

0

TOTAL

16,195

250

CO2 intensity per kWh (CIPK) in the last hour: 15.49 grams.

Table A2: Total Ontario generation and related CO2, by fuel, on 2018-02-21

FUEL

MWh

CO2, tons

Nuclear

235,222

0

Hydro

101,516

0

Gas

24,828

9,797

Wind

23,030

0

Biofuel

537

537

Oil & Gas

0

0

Solar

4,061

0

TOTAL

385,542

10,334

Average CO2 intensity per kWh (CIPK) over period: 25.97 grams

This content is updated at 50 minutes past the hour. Refresh at that time to see latest available data. Sources: www.ieso.ca and EmissionTrak™

Table A3 Should we replace nuclear plants with natural gas-fired ones? This table compares actual Ontario grid CO2 emissions from the last hour with those from a grid in which gas has replaced nuclear.

Actual Ontario grid

Gas replaces nuclear

250

5,896

15.49

365.31

Tons CO2CIPK, grams
If gas had replaced nuclear last hour, Ontario power plants would have dumped enough CO2 to fill Rogers Centre 2.0 times. As it was, 250 tons were dumped, which would fill Rogers Centre 0.1 times.